ABC to Air Two-Hour “NBA Countdown Presented by Mountain Dew: NBA Restart” Special

ESPN will produce the two-hour ABC special, NBA Countdown presented by Mountain Dew: NBA Restart, on Saturday, July 25, from 8-10 PM ET.

  • NBA Countdown presented by Mountain Dew: NBA Restart, will be led by host Maria Taylor and featuring analysts Paul Pierce, Jalen Rose, Jay Williams and ESPN Senior NBA Insider Adrian Wojnarowski.
  • The broadcast will include special guest interviews and live reports from the ESPN Wide World of Sports Complex at Walt Disney World – home of the NBA season.
  • The show will emanate from ESPN studios with Wojnarowski reporting from Lake Buena Vista.
  • The show will preview the restart of the season and the NBA seeding games, while also discussing news from around the league since the March 11 season stoppage.
  • Additionally, the NBA Countdown team will examine the current climate in the sport amidst the social justice movement and how the NBA, NBPA and NBA player leadership is responding.

More on the NBA restart:

  • The NBA will restart its season at Walt Disney World’s ESPN Wide World of Sports Complex beginning on July 30.
  • The complete schedule was released last month.
  • The 22 participating teams will be the eight teams in each conference with the highest current winning percentages and the six teams that are currently within six games of the eighth seed in either conference.
  • Each participating team plays eight “seeding games,” as selected from its remaining regular-season matchups.
  • At the conclusion of the seeding games, the seven teams in each conference with the highest combined winning percentages across regular-season games and seeding games will be the first through seventh seeds for the NBA Playoffs for that conference.
  • The NBA’s standard playoff tiebreaker procedures will be used to break any ties on the basis of winning percentage.  
  • Once the 16-team playoff field is set, the NBA Playoffs will proceed in a traditional conference-based format with four rounds and best-of-seven series in each round.  
  • The 2020 NBA Finals will end no later than October 13.